Overview
- The five‑part series premiered on HBO Thursday, presenting a historical account of how legal collecting evolved into a transnational illegal trade.
- Goode draws on roughly 1,500 hours of footage and about 100 interviews to follow dealers, smugglers and federal stings such as Operation Cobra and Operation Chameleon.
- The film centers on key figures in the trade, including Tommy Crutchfield and Hank Molt, and includes interviews with international traffickers and U.S. law‑enforcement operatives.
- Reviewers say Goode adopts a more measured, less mocking tone than his earlier hits, focusing on industry mechanics rather than sensational portraits of end users.
- The series spotlights conservation consequences by showing large seizures routed to Goode’s Turtle Conservancy, which cared for seized turtles and recorded captive ploughshare tortoise births while raising questions about enforcement and unintended market effects.